FEATURED ARTICLES ABOUT OFFICE PARK - PAGE 3

With new office projects continuing to multiply in the East-West Tollway corridor, Naperville officials said plans are in motion to create an office campus on more than 100 acres held by Nicor Inc. near Interstate Highway 88. The parent company of the natural gas provider announced earlier this year it had hired Mesirow Stein Real Estate Inc. of Chicago to act as development and marketing manager for its Naperville property. Details on potential development plans for the site northeast of the junction of the tollway and Illinois Highway 59 may be announced as soon as next month, a Mesirow Stein executive said this week.

A police manhunt that fanned out from Interstate Highway 290 in Schaumburg into the high-rises of the Woodfield Corporate Center surprised thousands of workers Tuesday and left some in their offices for more than two hours for their own safety. The chase involved a state trooper on foot chasing a man across three lanes of highway traffic during the evening rush hour, both of them dodging cars. Three police dogs then searched a multi-story parking garage as office workers streamed out using the stairwells because the elevators had been shut off. Illinois State Police said the subject of the manhunt bolted after the car in which he was riding was stopped for a traffic violation.

The suburbs may be awash in empty office space, but to some developers, new projects still make sense. For instance, construction recently got under way on the first phase of an office park that might have as many as 20 buildings, with a total of about 200,000 square feet. The property, straddling Barrington and Barrington Hills, is being developed by a joint venture of Great Lakes Principals LLC of Wheaton and the Wamberg Family Trust, longtime owner of the 43-acre site. "The developers found an anchor tenant, Smith Barney, to kick it off," said Daniel Bessey, a first vice president at CB Richard Ellis, who will be leasing the remaining space.

Working parents juggling demands of their jobs with the needs of their families may soon find an unexpected ally in their efforts to find suitable day care for their children. The unlikely source of help? Office park developers, who in at least half a dozen new or existing office parks in Chicago's north and western suburbs, are building day-care centers for the employees of companies they have snared in the increasingly competitive suburban real estate market. At a time when most businesses are taking only tentative steps, if any, toward sponsoring day care for their employees, such office park-based centers-managed and built on their corporate doorsteps by someone else-may help fill the growing demand for child care.

The Deer Park Village Board this week unanimously approved final plans for a 92-acre office park to be built west of a 550,000-square-foot shopping mall the board approved last week. In a continuation of last week's meeting, when the board approved the Deer Park Town Center, to be built on 87 acres at Rand and Long Grove Roads, board members Monday night gave the nod to Hamilton Partners of Itasca to build eight office buildings near Quentin and Lake-Cook Roads. The Deer Park Office Center would have 900,000 square feet of offices, parking for 3,800 vehicles and, possibly, a hotel.

Diver's air tank was turned off The oxygen tank of an off-duty Hoffman Estates firefighter who drowned last week in a diving accident in a man-made lake in Des Plaines was turned off, according to police. When Steve Macko was pulled out of the water May 24, it was discovered that the valve on his air tank was in the off position, said Des Plaines Police Detective Rafael Tovar. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration also is investigating the accident, said a spokeswoman from the agency's Des Plaines office.

MARK KAPLAN, president of MARC Development Corp., has formed a new commercial real estate marketing company, Midwest Real Estate Associates. The brokerage firm will specialize in commercial leasing and investment sales. Its first assignment will be as the exclusive leasing agent for the office park in which it has its headquarters, Williamsburg Village, Inverness.

Village Board members have approved a final development plan for 35.5 acres of land in the Remington Lakes office park. The property, on Remington Boulevard east of Naperville Road, was subdivided into six lots, two of which are now occupied or under construction. All six lots-varying in size from 4 to nearly 11 acres-are zoned for industrial/office development. I.I.E. International Imaging Electronics has been operating on one lot for about two months, said Paul Gorte, director of community development.

The Lake County Board joined the fight Tuesday between several school districts vying for tax benefits from the Conway Park office development in Lake Forest. Four school districts around Libertyville and Roundout claim they would lose revenue if the office park, which was annexed to Lake Forest in late 1988, becomes part of the Lake Forest elementary and high school districts. "This is $100 million of assessed valuation that the Roundout schools would like to have," said County Board member Francis T. "Mike" Graham of Libertyville.